Friday, July 15, 2011

My novel, The Fear of God,
is second in a series of books featuring Jaguar Addams and Alex Dzarny, two
telepaths who work in a future prison system, rehabbing the worst criminals by
telepathically making them face their fears.In this novel, Jaguar has to rehab Sardis Malocco, a cult leader who’s
blown up a bunch of her people, and may have plans to create the End of
Days.

The plot itself was a joy
to work with – there’s nothing like pushing your characters into a corner then
making them save the world.But what
was even more fun was developing the relationship between Alex and Jaguar.

In the first novel they
were at odds, and only slowly, tentatively, drawing closer to each other.In this novel Alex gets to the point where he
realizes he prefers Jaguar’s company to that of other women.Mostly this happens when Jaguar actually
finds him in bed with another woman, and silently goes away.After, he asks her why she didn’t announce
her presence and she says she didn’t want to disturb him.

You have to love a man who
recognizes that any real relationship-
between friends or lovers, between a reader and the book even - is a
disturbance.Then to go on and say you
want it.That’s just cool.But for me the phrase has deeper
implications.

You see, I want to
disturb people with my writing.Not all
the time, and not in every way.I like
to give my readers a fast-moving plot that keeps them hooked, so my structure
sticks to ancient narrative patterns that have their roots in all good
storytelling formats.I’m not out to
reinvent the wheel that way.

But I also want them to
come away from reading one of my books with their hair a little wind-blown,
their horizons broadened into new possibilities of behavior, new possibilities
of consciousness.So I disturb them
with characters who live on the edge, with language that tries to capture what
it’s really like to have psi capacities, with a woman who curses colourfully
and a man who is both courteous and powerful, and questions about things like
what’s the difference between what we imagine and what we produce, between
what’s sacred and what’s religion.

I’m grateful to both Jaguar and Alex for
giving me a way to do this kind of thing for my work, though I will say
thatJaguar has probably disturbed me
more than she’s disturbed any reader, or Alex.

BIO:
Barbara Chepaitis is the author of 8 published books, including The Fear Principle and The
Fear of God featuring Jaguar Addams (Wildside Press), and the critically
acclaimed mainstream novels, Feeding
Christine and These Dreams. Her
first nonfiction book, Feathers of Hope,
is about Berkshire Bird Paradise and the human connection with birds.She’s writing a sequel which tells the story
of helping our US Troops in Afghanistan rescue Eagle Mitch.Barbara is founder of the storytelling trio The Snickering Witches, and faculty
coordinator for the fiction component of Western Colorado’s MFA program in
creative writing.